WE HAVE been grateful for the opportunity of reporting at length the Rev. Kenneth Kirk’s lectures on Conscience, the last of which appears this week, and we are glad to know that they have aroused great interest, particularly among priests. The average Anglican clergyman is tragically unacquainted with moral theology, to which the Romans properly pay great attention. The preacher without some knowledge of moral theology is obviously ill-equipped, and for the confessor the subject is of even greater importance. It is perhaps natural that in this respect the Catholic Revival in the Church of England has outrun its supplies. There has been an enormous increase in the number of confessions made in our churches during the last five-and-twenty years, and for this most trying and important part of their ministerial work our priests are still largely dependent on the help and guidance to be derived from Roman Catholic manuals. Mr. Kirk and Canon Belton are among the few Anglicans whose writing on the subject is of outstanding importance, and we are convinced that Mr. Kirk’s lectures will have a real and widespread usefulness.
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